Where was I?
Answer later today.
Need a hint? Well, I’ve been to this spot before and have blogged about it and even published a picture of me standing at it.
Licensed To Choose Life
Bishop Fulton Sheen once pointed out that the reasons people give for their opposition to something sometimes don’t match up to why they’re really opposed. He told the story of giving instruction in the Catholic faith to a young woman who became violently upset when he started telling her about confession. She ranted that she would never join the Church because of its position on confession. Sheen looked at her and told her that the violence of her objection in no way correlated to what he had said about confession and asked if she had had an abortion. She hung her head and admitted that she had.
I was reminded of this story when I read about the Supreme Court refusing to hear the case of abortion rights groups petitioning to disallow states from issuing Choose Life license plates. On the face of it, the abortion rights cadre didn’t like the idea that the state legislature decided who would get the money made off the plates. That didn’t make sense, so I looked at the article more closely.
"About a dozen states allow drivers to pay extra for the specialty car tags to show the car owner’s opposition to abortion.
"Justices said they would not look at tag laws in Louisiana and Tennessee.
"Abortion opponents contend they have a free-speech right to broadcast their own views on their car tags. Proposals to offer car owners an alternative ‘Choose Choice’ plate failed in both state Legislatures."
Ah, now there we have it. If pro-abortionists cannot ram their "Choose Choice" plates through the state legislatures then they’ll make sure that pro-lifers cannot display their adherence to life on their license plates either. I’d say that such an attitude is childish, but in this context that would be obscene.
All About Twinkies
If you thought Twinkies were just a cream-filled sponge that lives forever, think again. Not only do some people eat their Twinkies, they actually cook with them too!
"Twinkies, they’re not just for dessert anymore. The new Twinkies Cookbook has recipes for everything from a Twinkie Burrito to Twinkie Lasagna.
"Theresa Cogswell compiled about 50 recipes for the book.
"Many were submitted to Hostess, as part of Twinkies’ 75th anniversary celebration last year."
In your excitement over the endless possibilities of using Twinkies, just be careful not to eat too many. The Twinkie Defense might not work today.
Hawthorne Family Reunion
When an order of nuns could no longer maintain the graves of two of the deceased in their care, they decided to rebury them elsewhere. But the decision wasn’t solely based on the bottom line of economics, but on the bottom line of love. They decided to bring the relatives home to the family plot.
"[Nathaniel] Hawthorne, author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables, died in New Hampshire in 1864. His wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, moved to England with their three children and died there six years later. She and their daughter Una were buried at Kensal Green cemetery in London.
[…]
"But when cemetery officials told the nuns that the grave site needed costly repairs, the order arranged to have remains reburied in Concord instead.
"On Monday, one modern casket containing the remains of mother and daughter was put on a horse-drawn 1860 wooden hearse and carried from a local funeral home through the town center to a church for the memorial service. About 40 family members and a group of nuns from the order followed the hearse in a procession."
Why were the nuns so concerned about the disposition of the Hawthorne family remains? They are the Hawthorne Dominicans, and their foundress was Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter, Catholic convert and saint-in-the-making Rose Hawthorne Lathrop.
Some might think Rose Hawthorne Lathrop’s conversion to Catholicism surprising, but I doubt her father, the great American literary artist, would have thought so.
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers. –Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Straight Story on Superman
A while back I posted HERE regarding the efforts of gay-advocacy magazine The Advocate to recast Superman as an icon of gay culture.
In the wake of that story, it was nice to see Superman Returns director Bryan Singer among the many pooh-poohing this notion — Singer’s own sexual preferences notwithstanding.
Singer described Superman as “probably the most heterosexual character in any movie I’ve ever made.”
Incidentally, SDG has posted his review of Superman Returns — so get the straight story on the film HERE.
Flying Under The Influence
Class, for today’s Journalism 101 lesson we’ll learn how to meet deadlines by plumping up odd incidents into gripping news events.
The story of a sick pelican crashing into a car may not seem to the layman to make for particularly interesting news. But on a slow news day you too can learn how to massage it into headline-worthy material. Let’s see…. How about saying the pelican was intoxicated and is now being held on suspicion of flying under the influence? But nobody would believe it! Or would they?
Calif. pelicans held on suspicion of being drunk
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — "Four pelicans suspected of being drunk on sea algae were being tested at a Southern California wildlife centre on Saturday after one of them crashed headlong into a car.
"Three of the California brown pelicans were found wandering dazed in the streets of Laguna Beach after another pelican struck a vehicle’s windscreen on a nearby coast road.
"It suffered internal injuries and a long gash in its pouch and was undergoing toxicology tests.
"Officials at the Wildlife Care Centre said the seabirds may have been under the influence of algae in the ocean that can produce domoic acid poisoning when eaten."
And that, my young journalistic apprentices, is how you turn a Non-Story into a Story.
Attending Invalid Baptisms
A reader writes:
My brother in law is expecting to be "baptized" as a JW in September. I fear that my in-laws, although they don’t agree with this "religion", feel that it has done my brother in law good, and would like all of us (me, my husband and our 4 children) to go. I am planning on declining on attending, and insist that my children stay home with me. I think my husband may go too. What do I do if arguments ensue? I feel that, as a Catholic, I cannot attend because then I would be giving my approval of this. I certainly don’t want my children attending this “baptism”.
If arguments ensue, I would point out that our presence at a ceremonial life event says something. If we attend a wedding, a baptism, or a similar event, we are in a sense lending our endorsement to it or to some aspect of it.
To show up at a Jehovah’s Witness baptism would communicate either approval of the fact that the person is becoming a Jehovah’s Witness or–at a minimum–that one recognizes that there is some kind of legitimacy to the baptism that is being performed, even if one doesn’t approve of the fact it is JWs who are doing it.
To show up at such an event thus would constitute a form of false witness. It would deceive people (either the brother-in-law or others who were at or knew about your attendance at the event) into thinking one of the above things.
Even if one tells the person that you do not approve or do not regard this as a valid baptism, the message will remain that it obviously wasn’t important enough to you to keep you from coming and thus you value what the person will think of you was more important than your concerns about the baptism or the person’s new religion.
And telling the person getting baptized that you think the baptism is invalid doesn’t tell that to all the other people who will see you at the event or who will learn of your presence there.
My policy is that if a sacrament will be valid then it will be possible in principle to attend. My reasoning is that if God is going to show up at the sacrament (in the sense of his action to make the sacrament valid) then it is in principle permitted for me to show up and watch as God does this.
If God isn’t going to "show up," though (meaning: the sacrament will be invalid) then I shouldn’t either.
To do so would send the wrong message, no matter what I might say with my lips.
In the end, it is more loving to an individual (and others) to be honest with them about the fact that a sacrament is not valid–and to prove that you’re serious about that by not showing up–than to paper over the matter and send the message that you’re not really serious or even that you approve.
20
Hentoff On Abortion
Nat Hentoff is an interesting fella. According to Wikipedia,
Nat Hentoff (born June 10, 1925) is an American civil libertarian, free speech absolutist, pro-life advocate, anti-death penalty advocate, jazz critic, historian, biographer and anecdotist, and columnist for the Village Voice, Legal Times, Washington Times, The Progressive, Editor & Publisher, Free Inquiry and Jewish World Review. He was named as one of six 2004 NEA Jazz Masters, the first non-musician to win this prestigious award [SOURCE].
He’s also a critic of both the ACLU and the Bush administration.
One of the things that makes Hentoff interesting is that he came from and is subsantially aligned with the American "Left," but he came to hold pro-life views and has been forthright in stating them.
in which he shares some interesting thoughts regarding Jesse Jackson, the Hemlock Society, and a 9-year old boy’s insights on abortion.
It’s worthwhile reading.
On The Road
I thought I’d share with y’all a couple of pictures I took on my recent trip to go square dancing in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago.
The first is a picture of the sign you see when you enter the town of Gila Bend, Arizona. A number of desert communities have humorous or otherwise interesting signs, and I particularly like Gila Bend’s (click to enlarge):
The second picture is one I took in Imperial County, California, where the Salton Sea is located. The Salton Sea is the lowest body of water in the United States–a couple hundred feet below sea level, making it American’s equivalent to the Dead Sea. But you don’t have a body of water be that low without the surrounding land being low, too, and so on many various buildings in Imperial County you’ll see elevation markers like this one (click to enlarge):
The Pet Detectives
Did you think Ace Ventura was the only pet detective around? Turns out there really are professional Pet Detectives out there who will implement the Missing Animal Response (no kidding) to track down on-the-lam Fidos and Fluffys.
"Pet Hunters International (PHI) is the first-ever pet detective academy that trains and certifies pet detectives and search dogs to track lost pets. PHI was founded by Kat Albrecht, a police detective-turned-pet detective who pioneered what are now called Missing Animal Response (MAR) services.
"MAR services mirror the same investigative techniques, technologies, and strategies that police detectives and search-and-rescue technicians use to solve missing persons investigations. PHI certifies ‘MAR Technicians’ to use high-tech equipment (amplified listening devices, night vision, baby monitors), cat detection dogs, trailing dogs trained to track lost dogs and horses, analytical methods like search probability theory and deductive reasoning to predict the distances that lost pets travel, and the collection and analysis of physical evidence. The MAR Technicians that we certify are typically animal lovers who are interested in working with animals and/or in training a dog to track lost pets."
I know what it’s like to love a pet and would be besieging St. Francis of Assisi with prayers and pounding the pavement in search of a lost animal friend of mine. But I can’t get over the feeling that "pet detective agencies" are just another manifestation of Western society’s tendency to idolize their pets.